Te Amo
by pluckingpearls
Summary: T for language and suggested adult themes.   Fever, disease, Spanish influenza, what will be made of it. There's pain in his voice, and he hates how forgiveness has to come between death and promises.


He rode up to the castle, long and sprawling, and could almost immediately tell something was wrong. It was in the air. The usual cheer and warmth that radiated from the bastard's house was gone, coupled instead with an unusual chill that left Romano's normally warm skin cold. It rose goose bumps all over his exposed flesh and he glanced around, half expecting that perverted France fellow to appear out of the bushes like some damn apparition.

No maids or butlers greeted him at the door to the usual sound of his horses hoof beats, and almost immediately Romano's heart and stomach plummeted to the very lowest it could ever go.

"Buongiorno?" Romano called hesitantly into the house as he creaked open the front door tentatively. Everything was static and still, hardly no movement, as if the wind itself was catching it's breath. Heart thudding painfully hard (harder than the long centuries when his people fought the Norman conquest) he stepped into the house, shutting the door behind him.

"Hey! Spain bastard! Where the fuck are you?" he called. He circled the lower level slowly, before coming to the kitchen. The stove was still on, and it looked like some tomato sauce was still simmering in the pan. Approaching closely, Romano saw that it had long past burned, the entirety of it smelling spoiled and rotten.

"You know you left the damn stove on you _idiota!" _he cried, but was only answered by the echo of the tile around him.

Romano exited out through the garden and saw many a ripe fruit discarded on the ground, molding and rotting and picked apart by birds.

Spain hadn't been keeping up with his garden. He hadn't even touched it since the harvest when the fruits became ripe almost all at the same time and you spent days out in the hot summer air, blistering and sweating and breathing in the smell of vegetation and cinnamon.

Without meaning to, Romano bent down, picked up the least offensive the tomatoes gathering by his feet and brought it up to his nose, breathing in the scent of the fruit.

_Cinnamon mingled in with the taste of tomato on his tongue, and he glanced through the vines and plants to see Spain bent over, wiping his brow with his forearm, his shorts hanging almost comically low off of his behind, sweat slicking his back. Romano stood still, basket balanced on his hip and watched him work, the passion and dedication he put into the plump little fruit, grinning and kissing each and every one he managed to pluck off the vine, and assuring the others not yet ripe enough that he would come back for them when they were ready. _

_ The tenderness he used in working with his plants, and the passion and the love was enough to feel a hot flush rush his cheeks (as if he wasn't hot enough already) and a sharp pick to lodge itself between his chest and his heart, bleeding him out with an unknown feeling. _

_ Jealousy? Over a mere plant? Don't make him laugh. What should he be jealous of? _

_ But nevertheless, Romano never stopped watching him, not until Spain felt his eyes on his back and turned, giving him a bright eyed grin, wide enough to rival the sky. _

_ "Si Romano? Do you need something?" he asked. _

_ And Romano hesitated for another moment before turning his back to him and plucking the tomatoes more viciously and without hesitation now, fueling all of his sudden flushing embarrassment into the fruit that made him spend so much time with this god damn man with the cinnamon skin and emerald green eyes clear enough to see right through him. _

_ When the day ended and Spain, feeling more bold than usual, kissed him, Romano couldn't object. His eyes watched the man, and his mere presence sent prickles up and down his arms, but he didn't want to leave him. Didn't want to escape from his presence like he usually did with "bastard" and "pedophile". _

_ Romano remembers how his fingers ghosted over his jaw, added light pressure to the pressure point on the side of his neck, before letting his long Spanish fingers graze up the short hair at the back of his neck and thread themselves between the short strands. _

_ He was so gentle, like he was with his plants, and Romano wondered if he only asked, if Spain would be that gentle with him all the time, would look at him with his gentle eyes and speak to him in his gentle and soft Spanish even though Romano could only understand every other word. He wondered if he would pluck him to the point of no return with his gentle fingers. _

_ That night Spain did. Coaxed Romano into things he couldn't believe could happen, breached a line and in that reached a point that Romano couldn't catch his breath and his body hurt with all the good things that could ever happen and the food burned and Spain didn't scold him for it. _

_ "Ti amo." Spain had said to him, in Romano's language, so similar to his. Romano wished himself to say it. Wished and opened his mouth to gasp and murmur and he couldn't. _

_ His lips refused to form the words. _

_ He didn't want to be forgiven for his inability to say the word. _

_ But the gentle kiss on the side of his mouth from Spain told him he was. _

He let the tomato roll from his fingers with a jolt, wiping his eyes with his fingers and running back inside again.

"Spain! Tell me where you are right now you god damn bastard! This isn't funny!" he cried, sprinting to the stairs, breath choking him in his chest. He took the steps two at a time, and flung open doors at a whim. He could no longer remember where Spain's room was, and he went down long hallway after long hallway in search of him.

There was a crash on the other side of the long hallway, and Romano ran all the way back, and found the door through which he could hear wrenched coughing from the opening, to which peeked into a white and sterile setting.

He pushed the door open and found Spain doubled over on his bed, trembling and looking down onto the mess of bone china his water pitched was reduced to.

"Spain!" Romano cried and when he looked up to him, he noticed his eyes were red and bloodshot, and his face was unusually and frighteningly thin. He had a pallor about him, that made him look ghostly.

"What's going on?" Romano asked, hurrying to his side. His friend smiled weakly at him, closing his eyes for a moment.

"I've sent everyone away. You shouldn't be here." he said, his voice more hoarse than any amount of yelling he had screamed at Romano as a young and stubborn child.

"Sent everyone away, what the fuck are you talking about?" Romano asked, kneeling in front of him, and having to steady himself when he swayed slightly.

"I'm dying Romano."

The heart beat in his ears was frighteningly loud. His world reverberated loudly and angrily around him and he suddenly felt sick and dizzy.

"W-what?" he asked weakly, as if pretending the words out of Spain's mouth had been misheard and his refusal to comprehend them had been to Spain having misspoke.

Spain ran his slim hands through Romano's hair and brought him closer to him.

"_Mi Roma. . . _I'm dying. I'm dying," he whispered, "And you shouldn't be here."

"You're not dying. You're not dying. I'm going to go get help okay you're not dying." Romano said standing suddenly and swaying almost as badly as Spain was. But he wasn't able to move because of Spain's surprisingly strong grip on his wrist.

"There is no help to be had. It is the influenza." he answered, eyes hazy and not yet seeing Romano for Romano.

Romano faltered, staring at his mentor, his father figure, his friend, his. . . Lover. He wasn't dying. He couldn't. He was Spain! He was Spain, the man who survived centuries of wars and battles and fevers being taken out by a mere influenza epidemic?

"You're not dying." he mumbled, feeling tears well up beneath his eyes, making his vision watery and fluid.

Spain brought him close and wrapped his arms around him. He was still warm like the summer sun under his thin clothing and through Romano's hands that he placed around his neck.

Spain's breathing slowed as he lowered his head to Romano's shoulder, and Romano felt his faint heartbeat thudding against his palms.

"Antonio, please don't." Romano pleaded, attempting to keep his tears from rolling from his eyes.

"Don't what, _mi Roma?_" he asked.

"Don't die on me okay. Please don't die on me."

He felt his sad smile against his shoulder.

"I'm sorry _mi amor." _

"_Te amo. Te amo. Te amo Antonio. Te amo. Por favor Antonio. Te amo." _

The words spilled from his mouth as if overflowing his entire circuitry and forbidding him from being able to do much else.

Spain's breath caught - Romano felt it in his body - and he just kept repeating it, over and over and over again.

"_Te amo Antonio. _Please. _Te amo. _Don't go."

"I'm here."

"Don't leave."

"I can't make any promises."

"_Te amo."_

_ "Ti amo Roma. Ti amo." _


End file.
